Books & Audiobooks
With her simple yet striking prose, Catherine Newman has created a story that will make you laugh out loud and sigh in sadness, sometimes on the same page. Her previous novel, We All Want Impossible Things, was my first introduction to this amazing story teller, a writer who brings her down to earth characters brilliantly to life on the page. She has the ability to make the simplest things in life seem as grand as they are and yet, as is often the case, as mere and minor drops in the bucket in the big game of life.
Sandwich is told from the perspective of Rachel (Rocky), wife of Nick, mother of two and daughter to aging parents. At 54 years of age, she is experiencing fully the ravages of menopause and her internal dialogues are often hysterical. The story commences on day one of an annual family trip to a rented cottage in Cape Cod. The children, Willa and Jamie, are young adults who are out of the house and living independently. The family has over two decades of vacation memories spent in this cottage and their obvious joy to be sharing it again as a family is palpable. They will be joined, as usual, by Rachel’s aging parents who bring their own measure of hilarity into the mix.
Each day of this vacation week offers the reader a glimpse into the lives, past and present, of this family unit and how deeply knitted together they are, warts and all. This is a story about love, loss, grief, joy and everything in between. If you are a woman of a certain age, I guarantee you that Rachel’s journey through her hormonal changes will make you laugh out loud!